One of the Scariest Movies of the 2010s Returns to Streaming

One of the scariest movies of the 2010s is now returning to streaming on Hulu, just in time for summer to end, and fall (with its Halloween spooky vibes) is set to roll in. The 2010s were certainly a transformative time for horror, which saw the genre officially make mainstream blockbuster success and critical prestige the norm. It was also an era wherein many new talented filmmakers took the path of creating breakout indie horror works that became big cult hits. This film got one of the brightest spotlights, as it came out of left field, and shaped a strong horror metaphor that struck a deep resonating chord with many viewers.

Australian filmmaker Jennifer Kent made her feature film debut with The Babadook, and what a debut it was. The 2014 psychological horror film went from a modest premiere at the Sundance Film Festival to earn $10 million at the box office (on a $2 million budget) and generated significant hype and acclaim within critics’ circles all over the world. A decade later, The Babadook is considered a horror cult-classic that has helped stoke an entirely new sub-genre of ‘grief horror.’

According to the story synopsis of The Babadook, “Six years after the violent death of her husband, Amelia (Essie Davis) is at a loss. She struggles to discipline her ‘out of control’ 6-year-old, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), a son she finds impossible to love. Samuel’s dreams are plagued by a monster he believes is coming to kill them both. When a disturbing storybook called ‘The Babadook’ turns up at their house, Samuel is convinced that the Babadook is the creature he’s been dreaming about. As his hallucinations spiral out of control, he becomes more unpredictable and violent. Amelia, genuinely frightened by her son’s behavior, is forced to medicate him. But when Amelia begins to see glimpses of a sinister presence all around her, it slowly dawns on her that the thing Samuel has been warning her about may be real.”

Kent’s film was praised for its atmosphere of dread and the general dark, claustrophobic world the film creates around a mother and son who are literally and figuratively trapped in their grief. The monster at the heart of the film doesn’t present the kind of threat you’d find in a gory slasher-horror flick, so it’s even more impressive that Kent was able to generate so much dread from the sequences where “The Babadook” comes to terrorize the house.

As stated, The Babadook was the first trickle in what would become a wave of ‘grief horror’ movies that have followed, particularly out of Australia. One of the biggest cult-hit horror movies of 2025 has been Bring Her Back, the second film from Danny and Michael Philippou, the former Australian YouTubers-turned-filmmakers. Along with their 2023 film Talk to Me, it’s become clear that the Philippous are official successors to Jennifer Kent, and Australia’s official new generation of “grief horror” ambassadors.

If you are not familiar with the term, it’s something of a new light being shed on one of horror’s core tropes. While a lot of horror movies are built on stories that have grief and loss in the background, this new age of films hyper-focuses on that process of grieving and creates horror monsters and situations that act as metaphors for the messy, and often dark emotional struggle it is to cope. Classic examples of grief-horror would be Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, while newer examples would be horror filmmaker Ari Astar, whose films Herediatry (2018) and Midsommer (2019) were bold new spins on grief horror that bridge the gap between 2010s works like The Babadook and the new batch of 2020s films like Talk to Me and Bring Her Back.

That all said, if you find you are a horror fan these days, it’s always important to trace trends in the genre back to their roots. And The Babadook is a milestone film you definitely need to see (or see again).

The Babadook is currently streaming on Hulu.